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Sunday, October 15, 2017

Apart from learning
humility, golf can be a great window into the human condition. Some aspects of
the game are a metaphor for life, with lessons that are generalizable to the
grander scheme of things. Even to the point of preventing and managing mental
health problems.

So, one of the
interesting behaviours I’ve observed on the golf course is the power of the
manner in which golfers talk to themselves during a round. I’m not suggesting
they’re hearing voices or chatting to a goblin walking along next to them. We
all talk to ourselves, mostly unconsciously, and what we are saying to
ourselves is a big driver of how we behave (excuse the pun but I had to put it
down-so to speak).

The most common
example of the power of our self-talk is when that little white round thing
starts doing odd things such as only going a few yards, slicing into trees or
heading left into that huge pond. Missing a short put will do it, as will
fluffing a short chip shot immediately after nailing a 200 metre 3-wood to
within 5 metres of the green.

After a couple of
errors that ruin maybe 2 or 3 holes, the self-talk becomes very evident. In the
worst case scenario, it can happen after one bad shot. Often it is verbalised
straight out with angry comments about ability, the course, the stupid game
itself, how the handicap has been slipping lately. Sometimes people go within
themselves, quiet. The shoulders droop and gone is the sunny disposition and
expectations of something extraordinary. There is a spiral downward from there
as the feelings lead to worse golf and so on. What’s interesting that golfers
will repeat this formula even though it clearly doesn’t work.

On rare occasions I
meet someone who talks to their self in a different way when things are going
awry. The internal message is that, ‘I’ll make the best of this round’, ‘I can
recover from this’, ‘I’ll at least have a few good holes’, ‘I’ll use this
opportunity to practice some things I haven’t tried before’. Somehow, they
manage to find something to be optimistic about.

And so it is with life
off the fairways. What we say to ourselves about our experiences and how we
feel determines our behaviour. It can determine whether we give in to that
temptation when we are trying to change a habit, how we react to someone else’s
comment or behaviour, what we decide to worry about, whether we decide to give
in or to keep on trying, for example.

There is a technique
psychologists use in therapy that involves being aware of our thoughts and then
challenging them in a very active way. In doing so, we force ourselves to think
differently, to have an internal conversation about the value of changing the
thought. There are also a number of techniques that can be used to change
emotions (contact me at stewart.hase@gmail.com
if you’d like to know more).

Many of you would have
heard of the act of mindfulness. This is the starting point and involves
recognising our self-defeating behaviour and the thoughts that give birth to it
and then challenging self. Being self-aware is essential to changing behaviour
that is not working for us. The changing of patterns that are self-defeating
but which we repeat over and over again.

So, if you are
interested in changing a behaviour that is not working for you then be mindful,
challenge those thoughts and replace them with thoughts that are more
productive.

Monday, July 17, 2017

The tragic shooting of
Justine Ruszczyk by a police officer in Minneapolis is an example of the power
of culture in determining behaviour in society, in organisations, groups and
families.

For reasons of which I
am not completely aware, I was looking through postings from people, mostly in
the US, about the shooting. The most telling thing about them was the array of
people thought to be at fault, including Justine herself. Media outlets have
been in a similar frenzy of fault finding. We have police brutality, the
inexperience of the officer, the government, that Justine must have been a
criminal or behaving erratically, the opioid epidemic and so on.

What no-one raised was
the American culture around violence. For me, that is the cause. The US of A
has allowed a wild west mentality to fester to the point where violence has
become the norm. Yes, some people are outraged when someone get’s shot but most
are desensitised. With over 30,000 deaths per year due to firearms alone, not
counting other means, this is a culture that accepts violence as normative. If
it didn’t, then something would change. It is important to note that police,
the very people who are asked to keep us safe, are also at huge risk and part
of the shooting gallery.

America cannot build
enough jails in which to put people. Drug use is seen as being a criminal,
rather than a health problem. Huge numbers of people are in jail because of
social problems and non-whites are massively over represented. America is a
punitive culture.

I won’t bang on about
this anymore because it is easy to do your own research. But there is a broader
implication here.

Humans are good at
simplifying complex problems by finding perpetrators, blaming, defining ‘us’
and ‘them’ and, even, making the victim part of the problem. Our plethora of ‘shock
jocks’ and some parts of an increasingly lazy and politicised media assist us
in our effort in dumbing down critical thought. Looking at the bigger causes of
our ills takes much more effort and we are, mostly, unwilling to do that.

We see the effects of
this all around us, whether it is regarding society, teams or organisations.
Even consistent failures within any of these are blamed on individuals or
events. Very rarely do we look at the system that has enabled the failure to
occur.

Over many years I have
been asked, countless times, to apply a ‘fix’ to the dilemmas of teams and
organisations. This might be training, coaching or a strategic planning
workshop. Most of the time this is the wrong ‘fix’. Rather, it is the culture
that needs attention and that means change at and from the top of the food
chain.

There is a rather poignant
example from the history of treating childhood psychological problems. It took
years for therapists to work out that they could use all sorts of clever
treatments with children to fix their problems but then they would then send
them back into a dysfunctional family situation that was a major part of the
problem in the first place. A negative culture out trumps (small T) individual
effort and resources anytime. So, family therapy was born. We’d bring the whole
family into the room and work on them. Much harder, more complex but better
outcomes.

I was once asked to do
some change management training in a government department. In short, a particular
group were seen to be having problems with an organisational change initiative.
My involvement revealed that it had nothing to do with the attitude or skills
of the group at all. Rather, it was a failure of the organisation as a whole to
implement change effectively. Further, the change initiative was designed to
create disharmony and stress for all involved. It was always going to fail. This
was all borne of a culture that bordered on bullying and a disinterest in the
well-being of people.

As for the US of A. I
suspect it is too late to change their culture now. Like climate change, the
tipping point may be past. At least I can’t see anything good happening for as
long as they keep adopting simple solutions to complex problems.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

After a
short hiatus, ‘Reading Bumps and Entrails’ is back. Watch this space for
fortnightly blogs about psychology, leadership, organisations and the odd foray
into the fanciful.

According
to Kerry O’Brien, Paul Keating (former Prime Minister of Australia) once
famously said, ‘What’s the use of having power if you don’t use it?’

Recently,
I’ve noticed, in my workshops, that people can get a bit squeamish when the
issue of power comes up. Like eccentric Uncle Sirius, it is talked about in hushed
tones: even a little embarrassment and perhaps best avoided. However, like Uncle
Sirius, we know it’s there and exerting an influence on everything we do. And
we might even use it ourselves, although we might not call it power.

I’d like to
invite power into the room. An agenda item for discussion.

Power is a
major psychological need. We all need power but to a varying degree. This is
easy to test out. If you ask a room full of people whether or not they like to
be micromanaged or constantly told what to do, the reaction is a resounding
‘No’. It makes sense. We like to have power over our personal circumstances. We
like to control things that are important to us and that have an impact on our
personal lives.

At the end
of an invisible spectrum, there are those who have an almost pathological need
for lots of power. We all sit somewhere on a need for power continuum. We are
all different in the extent of our need.

For me, as
an unreconstructed Darwinist, the need for power is immediately explicable.
Power is essential to making sure our genes are both replicated and survive.
How we obtain and exercise that power is a completely different issue, affected
by many psychological factors that, I think, are fascinating to explore. I’m
particularly interested in the pathological use of power but that’s another
blog perhaps, at another time.

Once, in my
dim past, I was involved in a collaborative project between a university at
which I was working and the that State’s Department of Health. My co-director
from health was on secondment from a job in which had been leading a large
number of staff and an enormous research budget. There was just the two of us,
initially, and ended up with a small staff of about thirteen. I once asked him
if he missed the power that he had had in his previous role. He replied that,
‘If I need power then I’ll go and get it.’ This was a brilliant and thought
provoking response that has stayed with me for well over 20 years.

Power is
something we can use or relinquish, depending on circumstances. We enable
people by using our power. We’ve all heard about leading from the rear,
providing an environment in when people can exert their own power. As I
mentioned above, some people don’t want very much power-just enough to be in
control of their immediate circumstances. We can also use power to drive decisions
about issues, perhaps highly value laden, that are difficult or uncomfortable.

Clearly,
power can be negative. Our drive towards achieving our goals can lead us to
diminish the power of others. This might affect personal relationships, a team,
or a whole organisation. It can lead to poor decision-making and poor choices.
It can destroy rather than build.

To the
point of this discussion. I think we need to talk about power more. We need to
be able to openly talk about how power is being used well and when it is being
used poorly. I’d like to see conversations about power and how it is being used
in relationships, teams and organisations as normal. Each of us needs to think
about, and get feedback about, our own use of power. We need to learn how to
use it well rather than badly.

This,
rather than waiting for a complaint that ends up in court, relationship breakdown,
team ineffectiveness and organisational distress.

Sankaran, S, Hase, S, Dick, B & Davies, A.T. (2007), Singing different tunes from the same song sheet: four perspectives of teaching the doing of action research. Action Learning: Research and Practice, 5(3), 293-30.

Sankaran, G., Hase, S. & Sankaran, S. (2006), What Impact will the Research Quality Framework have on Knowledge Production and Diffusion in Australia’s New Generation Universities? International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management. 6(2), 55-62.

Hase, S., Phelps, R., Saenger, H., & Gordon-Thomson, J.,(2004). Sun, Surf and Scrub: Dimensions of Social Disadvantage in Communities in the Northern Rivers Region of NSW. The Australasian Journal of Business and Social Inquiry, 2(1). Available at http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/socialsciences/ajbsi/?menu=3_34/.

Hase, S. & Kenyon, C. (2003, September 25-27). Heutagogy and developing capable people and capable workplaces: Strategies for dealing with complexity. Proceedings of The Changing Face of Work and Learning conference, Alberta, Sept 25-27. Available at http://www.wln.ualberta.ca/events_con03_proc.htm.